What are the best world practices for organizing the structure of documents (folders and files) of an IT project?

Question

Project management

There is a distributed team of 15-20 people working on one big IT project. Google Drive is used as a place to store working documents, in which an eclectic set of folders is created, like:
- Design and corporate identity
- Team building
- Concept
- CusDev
- Presentations
- Marketing
- Design
- Module 1
- Module 2
- Development
- Events
- Community
- Finance
- Photos from events
- Legal registration
Task: to develop a more understandable document structure than this set, and to make sure that when creating a new document, each team member understands in which folder to start it, and also to search after creation.
It is even possible to make a mini-instruction for the team.
Therefore, I would like to know what methods or practices already exist from world experience, so as not to reinvent the wheel. What should you back away from?
Maybe someone will even advise another tool than Google Drive, if in his opinion it is not suitable for such tasks. But we still like it and it suits everyone.

Answer 1

There are 3 tasks that are solved by two levels (human and system).
Now, in order:
For task 1 - structure: the project manager (PM) should be responsible.
For task 2 - placement: the automatic system should be responsible For task
3 - search: the automatic system should be responsible For task 2: Initially, any new document is created in "space" (without reference to sections, etc.) - unsorted/uncategorized. Then, there should be one more logical step right after creating the document, but before posting it: 1. Need to find out: What is this document about? (summary)
To do this, there are several ways: a list of pre-approved tags (created by the RP), text analysis and morphological parsing and then tagging, determining the necessary criteria using NN / AI.
2. Find out: Who is this document for? This is a set of objects from the list of roles in the system (for which the current storage structure was created): user, user group, project, specific project branch, specific build, specific repository, etc. Here are drop-down fields for each semantic group (with filling by analogy with tags).
3. Need to find out: What type of document? Options: descriptive/narrative (API, documentation, etc.), task/task/"for execution", resource (source code, translation, image, sound, etc.), etc.
4. You need to find out (usually only this applies today!): Which tags (according to the author) are related to the document? Here are all the tags from the available (or with the possibility of adding)
Everywhere: we hide everything that the current user does not have access to!
After all the points - based on these data, the system itself will correctly place the document in the desired folder and subfolder and so that everyone can easily find it.
After publication, everyone should receive a notification (e-mail, sms, etc.) about this: who created it, what document and when and where it was posted by the system.
For task 3:Search - a chronology feed of documents added and available to the current user, prepared searches by user tasks and fuzzy search by arbitrary request (also: only by available documents).
Everything described above was done on a regular CMS Joomla! for one company for internal use. All this, of course, with significant improvements and integration with MS AD and the SharePoint portal.

Answer 2

created an eclectic set of p

eclectic what you are looking for is called a "document management system", and Google drive is no way around here . Normal systems, alas, are heavy and expensive, but you can look at least on Trello

Answer 3

I would look for this purpose vTiger and Redmine
For them there are document management systems and/or groupware.

Answer 4

Yes, everything is simple.
• Take the workflow of the project (or write a new one from scratch)
• Number each main element according to the system 1000, 2000, 3000, and so on
• Number the sub-elements of the second level, respectively, 1010, 1020, 2010, 2020, etc.
• In your cloud, create a folder hierarchy the same as workflow items
• If there is not enough numbering at the bottom level, add a dot, for example 4030.10
• At the lowest level, if for example, 2 people are working on the design, create a numbered subfolder + full name. For example, 6000. Site/6030. Design/6030.10 Ivanov I.I.
• You use the same numbering in Trello in the names of lists and cards and in other programs and services (for example, we actively use free onenote for storing data and maintaining projects, we use the same continuous numbering)
• At any level, number by adding 0 (i.e. i.e. not 1,2,3, but 10,20,30) - thanks to this, it will always be possible to add an additional element / folder between the existing ones. For example, the first level: 1000/2000/3000; second level 1010/1020/1030/2010/2020/2030; Third level 1010.10/1010.20/1010.30/2010.10/2010.20/2010.30 etc.
• It is clear that it is easy to add a "sub-level" - making six-digit starting numbers (but not very convenient because of the bulkiness, we refused) or sub-levels after the dot (more convenient, because only rare workflow elements and their key folders will need the 4th and especially, the 5th level of nesting)
• Maniachit is not necessary, and you do not need to number all the folders. For example, a client makes furniture and sent photographic materials for the site, separate folders "measurement", "production", "installation", etc. It is hardly necessary to number such a low level according to this system.
Total:
• In the future, it is easy to add a new workflow element (and corresponding folder) of the current project between others - just add any free intermediate number, for example, between 6000 and 7000 add 6500
• In Windows Explorer and in the clouds, folders are sorted according to your order (5000 Prototype will come before 6000 Design), not alphabetically (where "Design" will come before "Prototyping")
• After 5-10 projects, you will have a deep tree structure, when, for example, the design will always be "6000. Design" - in the end, everyone will quickly remember it
• Very convenient to discuss something in the chat. For example, "Vasya, where is the photo for the site from the client on cast-iron hatches?" - "Petya, in folder 1070.20 Photo".
It is already easy to quickly find such a folder both by searching and by directly moving deeper into the UPD folders . At the top level of the folder with the name of the project, simple numbering 1,2,3 and date.
For example, "43. Cast iron hatches [2018-03-25]"

Answer 5

In large companies, there are project folder generators with the ability to see what documents can fit and where to get templates and checklists for these documents.
Unfortunately, I do not know any open sources on this issue.